


under the weather

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Season/Series 11, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 18:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14171088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Prompt: would you ever consider writing fic where william is sick with a cold or stomachbug and scully has to take care of him? maybe set somewhere post season 11?





	under the weather

Jackson is holed up in his room, and Scully can hear him coughing wetly from down the hall as she paces around the room with her daughter dozing off on her shoulder. She didn’t hear him come in last night. Thank God he didn’t wake the baby; her sleep schedule is fleeting enough without an unexpected wake-up as an added bonus. Scully pats her back, casting nervous looks down the hall as she passes the open door where she can hear the coughing. She has no idea where he’s sleeping at night; he could have pneumonia, for all she knows, from sleeping outside in the cold. She hates not knowing where her son is half the time, but she supposes she should be grateful that he shows up at all.

Lily is blinking sleepily, her fist shoved halfway into her mouth. Scully strokes her downy hair and kisses her little forehead before setting her down in her crib. Lily curls and uncurls her little fingers sleepily; Scully covers the baby with the star-speckled blanket that Tara had mailed about a month before the baby was born, strokes the side of her cheek before leaving to go check on her oldest.

Jackson is bundled up in the guest bed, buried under a pile of blankets. “Dana?” he mumbles underneath the comforter. He sounds like he is speaking through piles of cotton balls, his nose stuffed up.

“Hi, Jackson,” she says, going to the bed to feel his forehead. He is burning up. “You not feeling well?”

“No.” He sticks his head out. “If you think the kid’ll get sick, I can…”

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” she says immediately. “What are your symptoms? I’ll give you some medicine.”

“I’m, uh, cold,” he says. “And congested. I think it’s just a cold—” He breaks off into a coughing fit.

She checks his fever again, brushing sweaty hair away from his forehead. “I’ll get you some cough syrup,” she says softly. “Do you want anything to eat? Drink?”

“That’d be okay.” He offers her a small, grateful smile. Scully smiles back, tousling his hair a little, tells him she’ll be right back.

When she comes back upstairs with a glass of orange juice and a bowl of hot soup, Jackson is dead to the world. She leaves the juice and takes the soup, planning to heat it later. She brushes her fingers briefly over his hot forehead before leaving him to sleep.

—

Lily is not at a place where she sleeps through the night yet. She and Mulder are definitely used to it, and Jackson is definitely not. When she wakes them up screaming at two am, Jackson comes padding out of his room with them, sleepy and pale and shaky. “Kid still cries at night?” he mutters irritably in his raw voice, rubbing at his forehead.

“Yep,” Scully says back with her own brand of irritably. This particular part she didn’t miss at all.

Mulder pads past them down the hall. “Go back to bed, I’ve got her,” he says in a cheerful tone that makes Scully want to slug him. He’s still in new-fascinated-parent mode, and his insomnia gives him an unfair advantage. “You too, Jackson, you need to rest,” he adds, before entering Lily’s room.

Scully looks at her grown-up son, blinking blearily in the doorway, flushed and tired, and feels a rush of sympathy. “Are you feeling any better, sweetie?” she asks.

He shrugs. “No, not really,” he says congestedly.

She can hear the sound of Mulder pacing in the background, shushing the baby underneath the brunt of her cries. Rubbing at her temples, she offers, “Do you want to go sleep downstairs? It might be quieter down there.”

He shakes his head, shoving hair out of his eyes. “I’m cool up here, thanks. I’ll just… use headphones or something.”

“Okay.” Scully actually feels a bit envious; she wishes she could just plug headphones in and actually get a full night’s sleep for once. “Well, do you want any medicine? Anything to drink?” As long as she’s already up…

Jackson turns a little green, swaying in place. Before she can ask if he is okay, he’s running down the hall to the bathroom. Moments later, she can hear the sounds of retching. She winces with some sympathy; with morning sickness a not too distant memory, she has too many memories of vomiting herself.

“Hey, Scully?” Mulder calls from Lily’s room, sounding nervous. “Lils just threw up a little.”

“Oh, great,” Scully mutters inaudibly.

—

It seems as though Lily has caught Jackson’s virus. The pediatrician says neither case is severe, but that Jackson has likely caught the brunt of it. He holes up on the couch, covered in several blankets and whining the same way Mulder does when he’s sick. The baby mostly alternates between napping and spitting up. Scully tries to keep her hydrated. Lily lies curled against her stomach, staring up at her with bright eyes while she eats, and Scully is filled with a sudden rush of love and affection for her daughter.

“It’s like we’ve set up a makeshift hospital,” Mulder jokes at one point, and it is somewhat like that. They’ve set the kids up in the living room, mostly because it’s the only room with a TV, a makeshift bed on the couch and the playpen set up by the chair. Jackson and Lily sleep through  _Alien_ and half of  _The Shawshank Redemption_. Jackson wakes up for the second half, erupting to life with a coughing fit. “Oh, I love this movie,” he mumbles, rubbing at his eyes.

“Prisoners becoming lifelong friends and rebelling against the messed-up system?” Mulder asks absently, his hand dangling over the side of the playpen.

“Yeah, classic redemption story or whatever,” Jackson mutters into the pillow. He rolls onto his back, blinking blearily at them. “Sorry I got the kid sick,” he mumbles apologetically, as if just now remembering that he isn’t the only sick one.

As if on cue, Lily wakes up, wailing indignantly. “Right on cue,” Scully says with a little bit of laughter. She lifts the red-faced baby from the playpen, balancing her on her hip. Lily’s hot little hands curl in her hair as she cries. “It’s okay, Jackson,” she says, rocking the baby back and forth. “It happens. We’d rather you be here recovering.”

Jackson says nothing for a moment, watching the baby cry. Scully shushes her for a few moments before passing her to Mulder, wonders if it was a bad idea to go there. Almost a year and they still walk on eggshells in reference to the fact that he’s mostly staying with them, but also disappears for days on end and doesn’t disclose where he’s going. “Do you have  _The Exorcist_?” he asks finally. Scully grins companionably.

Mulder sighs dramatically. “You should be glad you won’t be able to remember this, Lils,” he says to the baby, touching her nose as he stands. “This is the type of movie to scar you for life.”

“And we definitely want to avoid that,” Scully says tenderly, tickling the bottom of Lily’s socked foot. Mulder bounces the baby on his hip as he carries her upstairs, retrieving the bottle from the fridge as he goes.

“So you like  _The Exorcist_?” Scully asks her son, sprawled over the couch.

“Love it.” Jackson blows his nose noisily, his cheeks red with fever.

“Want to watch?” She’s already halfway to the shelf where they keep the movies.

“Yeah,” says Jackson. “The green vomit may make me less self-conscious.”

Scully snorts out a laugh, retrieving the DVD from the lower shelf, where Mulder makes sure to stash the movies she likes so that she can read them. She both loves and hates this.

She brings Jackson a cough drop and another glass of orange juice along with the DVD. “I don’t really like orange juice this much, you know,” Jackson says, his nose stuffed as he takes the condensated glass. “It’s just kind of… okay.”

“I know,” Scully says cheerfully, popping the DVD into the player. “Drink it anyway.”

—

The baby starts clearing up about the same time Jackson does, which is also about the same time Mulder and Scully start getting sick. Jackson offers to hold Lily so she doesn’t get sick all over again. “You know,” he says. “Preemptive strike or whatever.”

Scully hands over the baby just before sneezing all over herself. “Family life,” Mulder says with an equally stuffy nose. “We should’ve seen this coming.” He wraps an arm around her as she sits beside him on the couch.

Jackson sits carefully in the chair, sitting Lily up on his lap, and flips on the TV. It lands on  _The Bibbletiggles_  and Lily’s eyes widen in a way that suggests childlike interest. “ _No_ ,” Mulder and Scully say at the same time. Jackson raises his eyebrows, but he changes the channel. Lily’s eyes well up a little as she starts to whimper in protest. Scully passes Jackson the pacifier.

When Jackson lands on a channel that no one protests, he leans back in his chair and lets out a low sigh. “So I was thinking of taking off soon,” he says. “Since I’m better and all.”

Scully rests her head against Mulder’s shoulder. She’s more or less learned to expect this, but it still stings a bit. “Oh,” Mulder says, the cough drop in his mouth clicking against his teeth. “Right.”

“But I figure I can put that off a bit,” he adds casually. Lily is sucking on the pacifier contentedly, tucking at Jackson’s finger. Scully watches them both with a raised eyebrow. Jackson shrugs. “Return the favor, since I got everyone sick.”

“Oh,” Scully says lightly. She sneezes again, into her elbow, leaning away before snuggling back into Mulder’s side. “That’d be great, Jackson, thank you.”

He shrugs. She smiles gratefully. The TV buzzes in the background and Jackson watches, balancing Lils on his lap absently as she sucks her pacifier. In the moment, Scully feels a sort of blissful, peaceful happiness. She thinks she’d like to stay there forever.

Mulder sneezes violently before he can warn her. She wrinkles her nose in disgust, scooting away from him on the couch. Mulder pats her knee in apology. Without taking his eyes off the TV, Jackson passes them the box of Kleenex.


End file.
